Monday, June 20, 2011

If you have been following the news on television, or the Newspapers, you are no doubt that we (Our Armed Forces) are playing a part in the attempt to unseat Moammar Khaddafy.

This is all part of the so called "Arab Spring", which started in Egypt, resulting in the resignation of its President, and then quickly spreading to other Arab Countries that were under the thumb of a dictator, of greater or lesser inclination to punish demonstrators for change, with varying degrees of savagery.

Now to a point, this was all well and good with the United States until unrest started growing in Libya and a group dedicated to the overthrow of Khaddafy formed and began to back its efforts with whatever armed might it (the movement)might have had on hand.

Now along about two or three months ago, The United States, in the person of our apprentice President figured that instead of staying on the sidelines and let the Arabs do all their spleen venting on one another, and more or less minding our own business, and staying the heck out of any more conflict in the Middle East, which would have been the smart thing to do, as the Good Lord knows we have plenty of Arabs who hate the United States and the Liberty it stands for as it is. But, Nooooo, our esteemed President decided in his finite Wisdom that this would be a grand opportunity for the U.S. to play a "Good Guy" role in this conflict, without risking much.

So our President decided that the U.S. would play what he called a Non-Kinetic role in the Libyan conflict. I think what he meant to say, until his love of Professorial Lecturing got in his way, was that we would have no troops on the ground, and merely establish a "No-Fly" zone over areas of conflict in Libya. Well, at least in the Prez's mind this was working just swell, until the few other countries who contributed Aircraft and Munitions to the "Allied" effort began to run out of Munitions and desire, leaving the U.S. to shoulder an ever-increasing load in this Brouhaha, maintaining not only our Aircraft and crews, and dropping more than our share of bombs on Ghaddafy's forces, but also now starting to give all our other Ally(s ?) all the munitions they needed to continue the conflict.

Well, So far, our country has embroiled itself in the conflict to the tune of Nine to Twenty Million Dollars a week, spent, as far as I can see, in what, I'm very much afraid, will simply give another group of Arabs cause to hate the United States even more than they already do.

We could have avoided this embroglio by simply minding our own business and keeping entirely out of any Arab vs Arab conflict, and simply waited until the dust settled, and then deciding what, if anything, we wished to do about the problem.

I , for sure, don't know about anybody else, but am of the opinion that Ten Years of Wars in the Middle East which have almost Bankrupted the United States, as well as wasting what is fast approaching Seven Thousand American lives is more than enough. We have proved to the world that we (the USA) posess overwhelming military force and, given a good reason, we will use it, but I respectfully suggest that Libyan politics is not a good reason. I think that Libya is none of our business, period.

Now I know, the gainsayers and Obamites will say, "Well George W. Bush started those wars", and this is true, even though he, and the Nation, was goaded into reprisal mode after the senseless tragedies of 9-11-01, but it shouldn't take a genius to observe what the cost has been for these Wars, and simply stayed the hell out of any further involvement in the middle east, AKA "The Sandpile".

You know, I have always taken pains to give little O credit for being a lot smarter that I am , but lately I'm not so sure.